


Hearts Dark as Snow

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Series: Fairy Tales for Foes [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/F, Female Harry Potter, Female Tom Riddle, Harry's Thirst, Murder, Regicide, Royalty, Snow White Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 20:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16436471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: What do you know of maids of snow?





	Hearts Dark as Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Kindly betaed by dear RedHorse.

What do you know of maids of snow?

 

Their hearts don’t beat. Their souls are weak. I daren’t disabuse you.

 

*

 

When Abigail sees her for the first time, she's certain it's a trick.

 

She walks barefoot through the snow, dressed in nothing more than a knee-length shift and a ragged scarf. Her head is bent, her face obscured by tangles of coal-black hair. She walks purposefully enough, but the direction in which she goes leads nowhere.

 

"How goes it, friend?" Abigail calls. "Bit cold to be dressed as you are."

 

"Not for me," the strange girl contradicts, giving Abigail a look of half-hearted disdain. "I am no one. I shall dress the part."

 

Abigail drops from her low-hanging branch and slogs toward her visitor, head raised and shoulders thrown back. "If you were no one, then you would be blue and shivering. Instead, you appear as comfortable is if it were spring. Who is ‘no one’ to do such things?”

 

The strange girl laughs. " _You_ are no one, yet here you stand, as at home in the snow as if you were born from it."

 

Abigail stiffens, backs away. Her mother had whispered such things, so long ago. _Daughter mine, babe of snow._ Then she would kiss her tenderly upon the brow and tuck a heavy quilt about her. _Mommy loves you, always._ But her mother has been dead a long, long time. What does this girl know?

 

"Do you have a place to stay?" Abigail asks roughly, still peeved.

 

"Are you offering?"

 

"For a price," she decides. "Your name. Your story." It gets lonely out here at times.

 

It is the strange girl's turn to back away. "That is heavy," she murmurs. "You demand much."

 

"No skin off my back," Abigail retorts, allowing herself a faint grin. "Not like you'll freeze out here."

 

The strange girl huffs. "There are infinite ways to die." Her wariness resurfaces, and she crosses her arms. "I have no desire to experience any of them."

 

Abigail clucks her tongue. "So, you're a bit more than no one and running for your life. A name and a story seems a pittance for shelter."

 

The strange girl's dark eyes flash. "Lead the way, if you will," she hisses.

 

Abigail hasn't got much; never has, as far as she knows. Just this little earthen hovel her adoptive brothers helped her build when they were all moving out of the Burrow. Abigail loves it; it's hers. The strange girl passes over the threshold like a ghost, her steps utterly silent. "Quaint," she concludes.

 

"Home," Abigail rejoins. "Have you got one of those?" Abigail sets a fire in the small stove and patiently fans it into life.

 

"No." The strange girl paces restlessly as they wait for the kettle to boil. "How long have you lived here?"

 

"In this cottage?" The kettle sings—after far too long—and Abigail pours the boiling water into two clay mugs, dropping a handful of dried, wrinkled leaves from a small tin into each. "Couple years, now. In the forest?" She gazes up at the pattern of the thatched roof. "Since my parents died and my relatives threw me out."

 

"Ah." The strange girl sits at the table; Abigail joins her with the steeping peppermint tea. The fire in the stove crackles to itself as they drink.

 

"So, my price," Abigail murmurs.

 

"Mary," the strange girl says abruptly, as though she expects it to mean something to Abigail. Why should it? Mary is a common name. When Abigail gives no sign of recognition whatsoever, Mary's mouth opens slightly in what Abigail takes to be shock. "Surely you have heard of me."

 

"Er, no," Abigail says apologetically. "Afraid not. Should I have?"

 

Mary slams down her mug. "I'm the goddamned princess," she snaps. "Truly, you are isolated here. Mary was the queen's name years ago, and it will be again."

 

"Oh. Okay then." Abigail takes another peaceable sip. "A bit isolated out here, as you said. None of the news from the castle and the town really concerns me."

 

"What a waste of a perfectly capable mind!" Mary pushes back from the table and stalks from one end of the small room to the other. "I could make good use of it."

 

The hairs at the back of Abigail's neck prickle in foreboding, but she ignores it. "If you say so. I'm happy enough, if you must know." Abigail watches Mary's progress, arrested by the intensity and fluidity of her movements, the swaying of her hips, the pertness of her breasts. "Anyway, you've only paid a portion of my price. I have… limited patience." Yeah right. She won't be kicking Mary out anytime soon, not with a body like that.

 

Mary snorts. "Very limited, I'm sure."

 

Damn. Was she really so transparent? "That does it," Abigail decides. "Get out." She grasps Mary by the shoulders and pushes her toward the door. "I could turn you in if you push me hard enough."

 

Mary merely laughs and extricates herself from Abigail's grip, darting behind her in an essential reversal of their positions. "I'll tell you, but not all at once." She moves away from Abigail, thoughtful. "I've never had anyone to tell."

 

"Oh," Abigail says, eager. "This should be interesting."

 

*

 

A young woman ran away from home. Her family—father and brother, both hard and uncouth men—didn't mourn her, didn't bother looking for her at all. The girl, in turn, didn't miss them. She wandered for many a day, low on food, low on friends, until she stumbled half-dead into the path of a young, handsome man on horseback.

 

"Please help," the girl said, and collapsed.

 

The young, handsome man tied his horse to a tree and crouched beside the fallen girl. She was not pretty by any estimation. Her hair was stringy and colorless. Her glassy eyes pointed in opposite directions. But a heavy golden locket had slipped from under her bodice and lay upon her chest.

 

"Dear God," said the young, handsome man, and lifted her onto his horse. He was the crown prince, incidentally, and per his duty, was betrothed to a merchant's daughter, whose beauty was legendary. But when one runs across a peasant girl baring the mark of a noble house long thought extinct, then it becomes one's duty as a prince to marry her forthwith.

 

Cecilia, the merchant's daughter, was not pleased. Tom, the prince, wasn't either, but he understood his duty. Merope, the not-quite-peasant girl—when she came to—was only too relieved to oblige him.

 

Tom and Merope were never happy. She had no education to speak of, and he had neither the patience nor the kindness to spare for her.

 

"What use are you?" he snarled at her, storming into the room where she painstakingly practiced her letters. In answer, Merope could only cry. Her day had been long and frustrating.

 

Nights were no better, during which he fucked her hard into the mattress, again and again. "If you can't conceive," he said after months of this, "then what good are you?"

 

What good, indeed?

 

She shuddered at Tom’s attentions yet craved something of her own; and so she savagely wished for a daughter: a daughter with hair black as coal and lips red as blood and skin white as snow, or so the tales she knew always went.

 

"I can give you that," Flamel, the old alchemist to whom she crept during a rare moment when no one watched her, sighed. "I need a drop of your blood and a drop of your husband's."

 

Merope nodded gravely. She'd come prepared.

 

The winter had been generous that year, and the world was awash in snow. Flamel knew his art well and made not one babe of snow, but two—for these things must be done in pairs. He didn't know quite why, only that it was so.

 

"Here you are, then," Flamel said to Merope, bathing the first of the babes in the potion of blood. It immediately began to squall as she held it to her breast, the pale, dark-haired girl she had dreamed of. She took the baby home. "This is Mary, our daughter," she told her incredulous husband.

 

" _Our_ daughter?" he said.

 

"She looks just like you," Merope returned, trembling.

 

"I suppose." The crown prince was no fool; he suspected the form of his wife’s treachery. Yet he could prove nothing. He would, then, make the needed arrangements to remarry.

 

Meanwhile, a young couple who wished for a child sought out the alchemist. “I need a drop of blood from each of you,” he said, gently hefting the second babe of snow. They eagerly obliged.

 

*

 

“Wait,” Abigail interrupts. “How do you know all this?”

 

Mary lets out an exasperated sigh. “I inferred. Oh, and the old alchemist told me some of it, when I bothered to ask.”

 

“Ah.” Abigail remains unconvinced. She gets up to pour them both more tea, then adds a splash of liquor to both their cups. “I’ll be needing that,” she says at Mary’s raised brow.

 

*

 

Merope’s funeral was a tawdry affair, with half the traditional number of mourners and twice the amount of traditional wine.

 

“Don’t fret,” the elderly queen assured the milling audience as Merope’s casket was covered in dirt. “The wedding begins in half an hour.” There were appreciative cheers all around. No one had felt any love for poor Merope—although they cared little for any of their rulers. Her baby daughter lay quiet and alone. None but her harried, underpaid nurse gave her a second glance.

 

Tom and Cecilia had a happy marriage for a time. She was beautiful with lustrous auburn hair and eyes as blue as glacial lakes. He was free of embarrassment. But she, like her unfortunate predecessor, did not conceive.

 

Mary, the elderly queen, took some interest in the motherless girl, who bore her name. It was not love; far from it. There needed to be an heir to the throne in case Cecilia never produced one, and—legitimate or no—Mary was the best option.

 

None of this pleased Cecilia. She made it her life’s goal to ridicule Mary at every opportunity. Mary kept quiet, read books aplenty, explored the vast castle grounds and the world beyond them. She made no friends her age. She did not need them. She found her company with the small animals that took refuge in the castle’s nooks and crannies, especially the snakes that warmed themselves near the boilers.

 

“What a strange child,” the old queen often noted. “She’ll make quite the interesting queen one day.” Cecilia, on hearing this, hissed through clenched teeth. The girl would never take her position, not as long as they both should live. She vowed it.

 

*

 

“After my parents died, I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle,” Abigail admits. “They didn’t want me, at all. My mother was a fool, they said, marrying above her station. So I ran away. Found the Weasleys in the forest.”

 

Mary considers her. “Did you hate your relatives, I wonder? Enough?”

 

“I don’t love them, no,” Abigail allows.

 

Mary smirks, cradling Abigail’s hand. “My story is not pleasant from here.”

 

“Then let’s take a break and go to bed.” There is only the one bed. Mary glances at it, dubious.

 

“Oh please,” Abigail huffs. “It’s not that bad. Pretty comfortable, not too small.”

 

Mary frowns. “Why no blankets?”

 

Abigail grimaces, recalling the stifling quilts of her childhood. “I don’t need them.”

 

“Of course,” Mary says. “Nor do I.” They lay down, unable to keep more than an inch between them. When Abigail curls into a ball, her she brushes briefly against Mary, and—

 

“You aren’t hot,” she says, amazed.

 

“Obviously not,” Mary says, peeved. “Made of snow.”

 

“Oh.” Oh, it is beginning to make sense. She, too, is made of snow, the second babe.

 

How strange, that they should find each other now. (How right it feels.)

 

When Abigail wakes in the morning, she and Mary have narrowed the gap between their bodies to nothing. It is comfortable in the predawn, when the occasional raven can be heard calling hoarsely to its fellows in the frigid late winter air. “This is cozy,” Abigail mutters into her pillow.

 

Mary sighs, draping an arm over Abigail’s stomach. “It is.” They remain cuddled, neither willing to end the moment.

 

Abigail’s stomach growls, and she extricates herself from their tangle and goes to prepare breakfast. Mary follows on silent feet.

 

“I don’t have much,” Abigail says by way of apology, setting out biscuits and dried berries and tea.

 

“I don’t mind,” Mary assures her.

 

*

 

In Mary’s tenth winter, the elderly queen and king died. Tom was crowned, and Cecilia, triumphant, stood beside him. Mary was not recognized as crown princess during the coronation.

 

“Why?” she asked Tom, plaintive, when the guests had gone away. “It is my birthright.”

 

“You stupid girl,” he snapped. “You are no daughter of mine. The throne will never pass to you.”

 

Mary laughed, wild. “And how will you stop me? You have no other heir.”

 

He gave her a withering look. “I will.” But the years continued to pass, and Cecilia still failed conceive.

 

Cecilia went off to the alchemist. Tom was becoming unbearably anxious over his lack of a satisfactory heir, and Cecilia would not disappoint. Mary stole after her.

 

“I can make you a cordial,” the alchemist said, “that will make it possible for your husband to give you children.”

 

“Good,” Cecilia said.

 

“It will be ready within a fortnight,” the alchemist promised. “Return to me then.”

 

When Cecilia left, Mary entered the alchemist’s laboratory. “Ah,” he said. “I wondered when I might be seeing you, princess.”

 

“I have not been named the heir,” she said harshly.

 

“No,” he agreed. “The king is right when he says you are not his daughter, at least not in the traditional sense.”

 

She glowered. “Tell me.” And he did.

 

Two days later, the king lay dead from an unexpected illness.

 

*

 

“Just like that?” Abigail asks. “He just died?”

 

Mary flashes her teeth. “Oh yes. These things do happen.”

 

“I suppose.” Abigail looks out the small window in the door. It’s nearly midday. “How much do you have left to tell?”

 

“We’re almost to the present,” Mary assures her. “What? Bored of me so soon?”

 

“No,” Abigail says. “Not quite.” She winks.

 

*

 

“You foul little changeling!” Cecilia shouted, her hair coming loose from its intricate braids and her face flushed. “What have you done?”

 

Mary blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

 

“You killed him. Now there will never be a proper heir!” Cecilia stabbed a finger against Mary’s chest. “Oh, what will my subjects say?”

 

“I expect they will wish for stability and want me on the throne as soon as possible,” Mary replied. “I am, after all, the late king’s daughter.”

 

“The late king, whom you murdered,” Cecilia hissed.

 

“You have no proof.”

 

“Who of us will be believed? I, the one who sits upon the throne, or you, a supposed heir with no allies but the snakes that seem to follow you?”

 

Mary tilted her head. “The throne is mine, my queen,” she mocked. “Pray, step aside.”

 

“Get out,” Cecilia hissed.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I said, ‘get out,’” Cecilia repeated. “If you are not outside the castle grounds by nightfall, then I can make no promises for your continued survival.”

 

“I need time to prepare—” Mary started.

 

“No,” Cecilia snapped. “Leave, or face my guards.”

 

Mary fled the castle in a thin dress and a pilfered scarf, rage burning in her chest. Cecilia sent her fastest runner after her, a hard man who dressed in wolf pelts and was rumored to savage people like a wild beast.

 

Mary was faster. She found her way into the deepest parts of the frozen forest, where only those down on their luck dared go.

 

*

 

“Well, that is upsetting,” Abigail says.

 

“She shall pay for her usurpation,” Mary hisses.

 

Abigail nods. “Maybe you could get the people to speak out against her rule. If there’s enough pressure, she might cede the throne to you.”

 

“Oh, you are adorable,” Mary replies, amused. “That is not how these things go.”

 

“How do they go?”

 

“Come back with me, and learn.” Mary leans forward, backing Abigail against the wall and caging her in, her long lashes dark, dark against her pale cheeks. “Isn’t that what you want?”

 

“I want justice to be done,” Abigail hedges.

 

“Then you must come,” Mary continues, her breath cool against Abigail’s face. Abigail leans forward, brings her lips to Mary’s. Mary obligingly engages in this new method of persuasion. It is glorious. Neither has ever felt warmth from another, only heat too scorching to bear.

 

(How is it, to kiss a maid of snow? To another maid of snow, it is indescribable.)

 

“I thought you would be killed on sight if you returned,” Abigail gasps, pulling away reluctantly.

 

Mary smirks. “I will not be seen until it is too late.”

 

They go barefoot. Shoes are a hindrance if they wish to be their swiftest. They slip through a gap in the castle wall, into a courtyard no one ever frequented. “Most have forgotten this is here,” Mary explains, pointing the crumbling statuary and several patches of dead brambles, not buried by the snow.

 

“Convenient.”

 

“Quite.” Mary directs them through a narrow wooden door, down a dusty corridor, and into what Abigail takes to be a laundry area. Mary hides her old shift beneath a pile of dirty linens and selects a man’s shirt and trousers from the line. Abigail cannot look away while she changes, drinking in the expanse of Mary’s supple flesh and the dark curls that poke above her drawers.

 

“See something you like?” Mary buttons the shirt slowly, smirking all the while.

 

Abigail flushes. “Why did you change?”

 

“Because I shall do what I must in comfort,” Mary replies.

 

The queen’s chambers are guarded. Abigail tosses a small figurine from the top of a small bookshelf, and both sentries start at the sound of breaking porcelain. They are diligent at their posts; they leave immediately to investigate. Mary and Abigail slip through the unlatched door.

 

Cecilia is not asleep. She sits in a chair by her curtains, gazing listlessly into a gilded mirror.

 

“What do you hope to see in there?” Mary asks, creeping up behind her.

 

“Certainly not you. How did you get in without raising the alarm?” Cecilia hisses, baring her teeth at Mary’s reflection.

 

“Such vanity,” Mary says. “Watch the corridor, please.” Disappointed, Abigail puts her eye to the peephole. The guards have not yet returned from their investigating.

 

“It’s time I take back what is mine,” Abigail hears Mary say.

 

“It is not yours to take, changeling,” Cecilia says. Then, “What are you doing?” Her voice goes shrill. Abigail can’t continue looking out into the empty corridor; she whips around just in time to witness Mary slash a knife across Cecilia’s throat, while her other hand tips her head back for better access. Cecilia’s blood drips down her bodice, down Mary’s wrist; it splatters seemingly everywhere, an endless scarlet flood.

 

Abigail wants to run, but the glittering triumph in Mary’s eyes keeps her still. “Why?” she chokes.

 

Mary lets Cecilia’s limp form slump back into the chair and steps daintily across to Abigail, taking her hand. “This is how these things are done.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be,” Abigail protests weakly. Her heart thuds as Mary draws nearer. “You _did_ kill the king, didn’t you?”

 

“Of course.” The shirt Mary wears is drenched in the queen's blood. She draws Abigail to her, the blood now staining both of them. "You are part of it now," Mary purrs. "There is no going back."

 

Abigail wishes she hadn’t been so eager to help an attractive stranger. She supposes she brought this on herself. But Mary’s embrace is warm, and she does not pull away. (She knows she should. She should go back to her hovel in the forest, never to return.)

 

Mary lets Abigail go and lifts the crown from Cecilia’s side table. “Long live the queen,” she says, and sets it on the corpse. She smiles in satisfaction, her teeth sharp and gleaming in the firelight. “Come here.”

 

Abigail joins her, reluctant. Mary’s lips are suddenly on hers, her knee between Abigail’s legs. Abigail melts into her touch.

 

*

 

The queen’s murder is not greeted with panic and horror, as Abigail had expected. She had not been well-loved, it seemed, and the people are ambivalent about her replacement. What’s it to them if a bastard changeling wears the crown? Nothing will change for them.

 

Mary bends her head to accept her crown. When she rises, she spreads her arms wide and smiles at her gathered subjects. “I am honored,” she says, “to serve you. Drink up!”

 

Abigail drinks. No one pays her any mind, until Mary puts a hand on her shoulder and leads her to a spot too obvious for her liking. “And this,” Mary says, catching everyone’s attention, “is my consort. She shall wear our late queen’s crown.”

 

There is some confused muttering and an angry “But that is not tradition!” from the back of the crowd, but something in Mary’s expression silences them. Abigail stands quietly, takes their stares, accepts the crown.

 

She should go back to the forest, for disgust at what Mary has done roils in her gut. But she is weak for company and comfort. She remains.

 

*

 

And so it went, with maids of snow true to their natures.

 

One maid of snow has taken back her kingdom and found her consort. There is no need for an heir. If the world is cold enough, snow lasts forever. The other is her consort. Perhaps she didn’t know better.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for girls made from snow and blood was inspired by _Girls Made of Snow and Glass_ by Melissa Bashardoust, a very gay, surprisingly creepy retelling.


End file.
